The Liminal War

by Ayize Jama-everett

  It’s not just for me. Big Sally got in the kitchen and made a feast for all of us, Robert Johnson, her three bartenders, six members of the house band, and some hungry children outside.

  “Do what you did to me, dead eyes,” Sally tells me, referring to the worms, as I watch Mico and Johnson arrange the tables of the juke joint into one long table. “But take some of the heat off it.”

  “Already done. Gotta say you’re taking all this in stride, lady.”

  “Sheeit. My mama scrapped with night doctors and voodoo priestesses since I was little. Big powers like fucking with little niggers.” She points to Johnson. “Shit, just ask that nigga right there. If he ain’t a dock for demon interest, don’t know who is.”

  “This starts going down, you get everybody you can across that back creek to safety, yeah?”

  “Long as you promise to slice that one put worms in me.” She laughs.

  “Not a problem,” I lie.

  Cheese grits, clabbered milk, chicken and rabbit stew, hush puppies, fried okra, tomatoes, turnips, baked sweet potatoes and apples, candied yams, collard and mustard greens, five large lake trout breaded, six broiled chickens, and for me and mine a lamb and beef steak each. Glass steins of black beer and bottles of whiskey and moonshine border each setting.

  “Far as last meals go, we could do worse, yeah?” Tam says as she sits down next to me. Somewhere she found gear more suited to her style of combat. Thin black pants, hobo-like fingerless gloves, and a black pullover too tight for the times. She’s braided her hair back like Chabi’s into one mid-back-length queue. When it taps the back of her chair I hear the razor trapped in the small tuft at the end. I nod softly. Her hand is hot and sweaty when I take it in mine. I remind her to breathe deep by example. She takes it in and relaxes just a bit. In this small moment she reminds me of Yasmine.

  “Looka here!” Big Sally barks directly over me from the head of her table. “Ya’ll ain’t need to know why you’re getting fed so good. Best ya’ll just give thanks and move on. But I’ll say this. Tonight you might see some stuff you wish you didn’t. That moment come, best to run. After this, y’all won’t want for strength.”

  Quizzical looks over take the assembled. It’s obvious Sally’s never been much for public speaking. Mico’s kindness doesn’t allow him to watch anyone stand alone. Almost as if planned, Johnson begins his open D style tuning by the stage as Mico’s slight vibrato puts everyone in mind of preaching from the other end of the table.

  “I’ve travelled . . . well, a long way to get here with folks that started as strangers. We’ve been assailed by flesh and spirit to the point where, I’ll confess, I’d lost my way. The hard times aren’t over, but my strength has returned. I got my second wind. See, my god abandoned me, and like a fool I kept my knees bent. It took the strong hands of my friends to help me stand like a man . . . maybe for the first time. I’ll tell you this truth so that you understand and carry it with you all your days. So that you tell your children and their children: your god may abandon you, you may be lost in place and time. But your friends, your true friends, will never abandon you. And that’s the only power you need.”

  A host of “hallelujahs” and “amens” go up before he sits back down. Even Tam is grinning a little. She takes a pull of beer, then muses over the dinner din. “Maybe we’s ain’t such a bad influence after all, right, Tag?”

  “Right, kid,” I tell her, cutting into a juicy lamb steak.

  Last night’s jam session was crap compared to what Johnson and Mico are laying down. Even the drummer got off the stage, ashamed of not being able to keep up with the poly rhythm of Mico’s foot stomps and Johnson’s guitar slaps. Well-seasoned horn players and a bassist hold up the wall with their instruments securely fastened and hidden as the onstage duo works their way through the catalogs of Skip James, Lonnie Johnson, Texas Alexander, and Buddie Petit; if Sally is to be believed. No less than three hundred black bodies are rocking, stomping, swaying, sometimes crying in time with the music, begging Mico to “Go on!,” demanding Johnson “Watch out now!” One intrepid young harmonica boy almost gets beaten by the crowd when he tries to blow with the duo. But Mico even makes that part of the act, rescuing the kid’s instrument and humming four ruckus bars of joy into it.

  “Thanks for the help, kid.” Mico grins as he throws it back to the kid in the crowd. Everyone laughs. Everyone but Robert Johnson.

  As is his custom, he plays standing with his back to the crowd, swaying vigorously to the music. But there’s menace in his sway. Johnson does to the crowd’s soul what Mico does for their bodies. Johnson is the pied piper in here, infusing his chords with a dark and deep magic. Unconsciously. Leaning against the back bar with Sally, I’m as entranced as everyone else. Until the rodents begin to pour in.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ten rats for every human flood Big Sally’s in seconds from the doors to the rafters, the window, the floor boards. Big rats, nasty and cruel with overgrown buck teeth desperate for flesh and claws designed to scoop eyes from sockets. Each with a slightly cocked head. Prentis rats.

  What weapons that exist in the speakeasy—straight razors, switch blades, small caliber pistols, and bats—are quickly produced. But Mico is faster still.

  He plays an unknowable chord on the banjo, and all the rats freeze in mid-motion.

  “Ain’t y’all heard? This is our house tonight!’ he howls. The rats respond by filing up to the stage and sitting in rapt attention. I catch Tam out the corner of my eye: prepared, but not tense, a stark contrast to the crowd—all of whom have gone from revelry, to horror, to fascination in under a minute. Mico makes it all part of his show, not missing a beat where even Robert Johnson has stumbled.

  “Out. Go out, you plague-infested carrion-eaters. And tell your masters I’m coming.”

  This is not the type of fight I like. Straight ahead, outgunned and outnumbered. Kothar in his safari gear waits outside of Big Sally’s casually, a near-snarling Poppy to one side of him, an obviously dazed but still rabid Prentis on the other, with Nordeen damn near holding her leash. Folks that don’t listen to Sally’s yelling follow Mico and the rats out the front door. He stands on the porch, eyelocked on Kothar. The heat between them is enough to make most get in their cars, if they can manage, or just run. I take my place by Mico’s side. Tam is the last person out, making her entrance with murder in her eyes. Together we all descend the stairs.

  “You’ve given every which way but straight ahead to get at me, Kothar,” Mico says. “Are your imaginary balls retreating into your body in this zero hour?”

  “You think I’m afraid of you? Cut off from your god with rogue Liminals by your side, and out of time? You’re a loose end. Nothing more.”

  “A loose end you haven’t been able to clip,” I tell him, stepping forward. “Enough of the lip-flapping. Prentis, time to come home, love.”

  “The animal totem is ours,” Poppy hisses. Tam’s locked in. I boost her system by 50% and give her a natural endorphin high as a go sign.

  “Wanker,” she whispers. I don’t know how she’s able to move so quickly but in the ninety feet between us she manages to break the sound barrier. The telekinetic punch she throws misses Poppy’s jaw by millimeters, but when you’ve got a sonic boom behind you, close is good enough. He goes flying back. Miles. She takes half a second to admire her handiwork then flies off after him.

  I cram every bit of the Dame’s brain cancer into Nordeen. It’s like shoving a filet mignon down a swirly straw. It’ll only incapacitate him for a few minutes. I’m banking on that time. But from above, in the shadows of the trees, a beast darker than a black hole leaps, separating me from Mico. Big Sally’s flickering porch light is the only thing that helps me see it clearly: a black lion, a perversion of the Conquering Lion of Judah depicted on the Ethiopian flag. The cat they wrestled from Marley’s dream. It’s the size of a pony.

  “Come on, Prentis,” I beg, circling, keeping the lion’s attention on me and not Mico. �
�This isn’t you.”

  The beast moves quickly in a threatening swipe of its my-face-sized paw. Prentis stands with the shadow creature, protecting the downed Nordeen. I risk a look over at Mico. He’s done it right.

  The sea-drowned Africans’ rage needed an outlet. Mico’s banjo playing linked the old world with the new. They knew the sound of banjo, one of the few instrumentalities the Africans were able to retain through the middle passage. All of Mico’s playing—the picking, slapping, the singing, even the harmonica playing—all of it with his right arm dominant, designed to wake the African spirits. They heard the songs of their children. Heard Mico’s need, and like all good parents, they chose to fight for their child. His body is encased by a shifting black body armor. Black bodies big, otherworldly, strong. Strong enough to fend off the blows of Kothar.

  My ankle goes red and white with soul pain. Not paying attention. The lion tagged my leg. Physical healing is irrelevant. The pain will stay. I jump back on my good leg and pull the entropy blades.

  “Kid! You’ve got to fight him.” I crouch low, beef up my calves, and let my eyes notice a larger stretch of the visual plane. I can see whatever liminal energy is building in the ghost lion, coursing through its body, prepping for another attack. “We can deal with these bastards with you on our side.”

  “You will die here, Taggert,” Norden says for her, though he’s still doubled in pain. I dodge a man-sized splinter broken by African-encrusted Mico over a pissed-off Kothar’s head, only to catch the lion in mid attack.

  I don’t rise up but stay low, smelling the baked dirt. I curl into a ball as the lion rears up for me, then turn and kick up with enhanced legs at its chest. The blades work perfectly against my leg thrust as I hook its back paws as the lion sails skyward. It howls on its journey upward. Tamara flies directly into it, still reeling from some blow delivered from miles away. Not that it slows her down much.

  “What the bloody hell?” she shouts, hovering over the juke joint’s leaning frame. She holds the lion at bay with her power. Quickly she scans me.

  “Bad kitty!” she yells and throws it down on top of Nordeen with the force of an asteroid. She rips half of Sally’s sheet metal roof off and flees in pursuit of the Hookworm demon.

  The lion drop caught Prentis off guard, so she feels the empathic brunt of it through the beast. Gives me a second to help Mico. By the steps, the Alter has his hands around Mico’s throat. I run to one of the few cars left. Passenger side door is what’s closest, so that’s what I yank off. I throw it hard at the Alter’s head. Nothing. Not even any indication he feels it as it skids through Sally’s wall and floor. No choice. I’ve got to do it.

  I will the entropy blades into my hands and jam them into Kothar’s back. Nothing. Damn.

  “Were you trying to get my attention, failed healer?” He’s not stopping the choking. Over his shoulder I see Mico fighting for consciousness even through the armor of dead Africans. “Did you think your entropy butter knives would be any more than an annoyance to me? I am of the Black Liminal. The eternal spirit of my species. The perfect template. The sound of my native tongue drives your kind insane. I stand in contradiction to your reality. I defy any logic you can possibly master. And your best strike against me is two blades in the back?”

  “I’m not trying to hurt you.” This is going to hurt. “I’m going to heal you.”

  I fall into the abyss and am molested. The fina materia within him . . . it . . . them. I feel . . . absolute nothing. “I,” as a term, becomes irrelevant because it indicates personhood. “A” being. There is nothing in this form. Not even form. It evaporates everything, this sensation. It erases all it touches, and when it’s done, the sensation will evaporate itself. It’s so much stronger in Kothar than Poppy. But soon even that separation is evaporated, as it, this great nothing, has been growing in me since I first felt Poppy. Before then. This is the truth that depression points to. Only this is no manufactured firing of neurons. This is the uncomfortable truth of the universe naked and felt. All things tend toward this stillness. Toward death.

  It takes my fight first, the stillness. Then my mind. I beg for my eyes, to keep them open to look for hope, but I lose that petition as the stillness takes full control of my body.

  But only for a second.

  That which is liminal, whatever it is, cannot be still. It chatters like Prentis on a caffeine high; it scraps like Tamara when she’s cranky. It sings like Samantha on a beautiful morning. It must move. My heart stopped—joining the entropy. But my liminality pulls it back. I had a heart attack, but with each new heartbeat I get stronger and reduce the power of the entropy. And Kothar. There’s no way I’m in fighting shape, so I’m glad when Mico twists the Alter’s hand off his throat and kicks him into the doorless car.

  “You okay?”

  “Pay attention!” I tell Mico, pointing to Nordeen behind him. My old teacher is up and pissed. That brain cancer is big and nasty in him but it’s not slowing the bastard down.

  Mico blacks up—angry arms, torsos, legs, and faces flickering in place of his—stomping toward Nordeen, when Poppy flies in from nowhere and shoves him into Big Sally’s. Plywood, sheet rock, and glass give way like paper. Poppy flies around the porch, kicking every support beam down around the wrecked building. When the roof caves in I hear Mico scream from the inside.

  “I’ve decided to rape your daughter for one hundred and fifty years. Do your kind live that long?” Poppy asks, juggling the beams in one hand as he levitates above me. He doesn’t fly as much as give a “fuck you” to the laws of physics. Then to Nordeen, “Can you handle this?”

  If I had any more energy, I’d be panicking right now. But I just had a heart attack. Poppy flies away, happy I’m about to die.

  “Kid, I see you,” I shout, getting up slowly. “Nordeen’s got you all gothed out instead of your usual colors, but you can’t help but have sleeve up, one sleeve down.”

  “Would that have mattered when you were mine, Taggert?” Nordeen hums as I walk toward him. Reduced as my power is, I see the liminal rising in Prentis. She’s calling something.

  “Once I knew what you were.” Rubble is moving in what’s left of Big Sally’s. Good. Means Mico’s not dead. That’s a start. “Once I was clear you could never be trusted, that you would pervert and cheat and steal your advantage regardless of the cost to me—oh yeah, I prayed someone—anyone—would be able to see past what you made me do.”

  Around us, twelve Great Dane-sized husky hounds, made of the same dark dream material as the downed lion, all with red eyes, howl in unison. Johnson’s fucking hellhounds.

  “You should have prayed to a different god.” Nordeen smiles. I pull my blades.

  It’s not even a word. A hymn grunt, and a strum. I’ve never heard him before today. I’ll never forget that moanful sound. It’s got that outsider logic, born from loss but programmed to endure. It harmonizes with intention, laughs and cries at the same long night. It’s the will of life despite the certainty of death. It’s the sound of the blues. As sung by Robert Fucking Johnson.

  He plays off in the field, singing that damned song. Don’t know what Mico was talking about. There is spirit in that song. The beasts turn toward his song in full attention. Then they take off at him, for prey or play, I can’t tell, but the music doesn’t die, it just fades away accompanied by the howls of the beasts. Guess Johnson learned to stop running for a second. I turn back to see a new sight in my old teacher’s eyes. Caution.

  “Touch me and I’ll . . . ,” he threatens but backs away as I sheathe my blades and walk toward Prentis. Struggling little Prentis.

  “I’m not going to touch you. I’m going to heal her.” Great thing about looking into the void named Kothar? Kind of cures you of any other fears. Like the fear of being controlled by Nordeen again if I attempted to heal Prentis. I felt her like an infection that I didn’t want to catch on an unconscious level. No more. She’s my girl.

  “I told you, girl. You’re with us
now. You’re never alone,” I whisper into her ear and let whatever healing I have left pour into her. I don’t have the strength to seal off her pain receptors. This is going to hurt. The both of us.

  I’m in a fiery pain and half dead. But Prentis is in agony and fully aware. And pissed.

  “You made me kill the animals!” she shouts at Nordeen, and I see real fear in him for the first time. Of course, it’s from the vantage point of the ground. I can’t stand.

  “I unleashed the animal in you.” Nordeen breathes hard, and white-hot sparks issue from his mouth.

  “You turned predator into violator!” I’ve never seen Prentis this angry. And when she’s angry, the animals around her get angry.

  “I’ve shown you a world few can comprehend—”

  “You took me from the only people that ever loved me. You abused me and the animals!” Ten times the number of rats that swarmed Big Sally’s horde Nordeen. I hear a scream choked by a rat body, but that’s just the beginning.

  I didn’t know how many owls there were in Mississippi until they all come to take bits of Nordeen. Then the bats. Then rattlesnakes. I knew about the coyotes. And of course the alligators, though I was surprised to see them come from the woods. Each take bits of Nordeen. Any attempt he makes to fight them off is stifled by a new attack. He doesn’t stop screaming, even as three different ’gators go off with parts of him.

  “Hey kid,” I call out to Prentis from her feet.

  “Taggert. You look like shit.” There she is. The girl worth it all. Our heart. Our best part. Prentis.

  “Been better, I won’t lie. How about you?” She helps me stand.

  “I’ll never be okay again,” she tries to joke. I take her face in my weak hands again.